In traditional milling practice, as shown in FIG. 1, a workpiece 102 is held in a vice or other holding device 104. The portion 102a of the workpiece that is outside of the clamp or holding portion of the vice or other holding device 104 is milled using consecutive indexed passes of a cutter 106 of a suitable milling machine 108. Particularly, consecutive indexed passes of, for example, back-and-forth feed motion of a rotary cutter 106 are used to mill the portion 102a of the workpiece. Another traditional bone milling apparatus is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,607,269, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. In a traditional bone milling apparatus, such as the foregoing, only the portion 102a of the workpiece that is outside the vice or other holding device 104 is able to be milled. The portion 102b of the workpiece that is held within the holding device 104 cannot be milled, and thus, becomes scrap or waste material.
Where the material of workpiece is valuable, such as but not limited to human bone or tissue, the inability to mill the remaining portion held within the holding device can become a substantial or important issue. In some cases, at least up to twenty-five percent (25%) of the workpiece may be held within the holding device and becomes scrap material. Where the workpiece is human bone, for example, this amount of scrap material can be unacceptable, both financially and morally.
Thus, there exists a need in the art for osteobiologic milling machines and methods of using the same resulting in up to about one-hundred percent (100%) workpiece utilization. There is also need in the art for osteobiologic milling machines where all bone contacting components can be easily cleaned or autoclaved. There is a further need in the art for osteobiologic milling machines with novel feed and indexing mechanisms.